Aurel C. Popovici's Nationalism and its Political Representation in the Habsburg
Empire (1890-1910)
Marius Turda
Central European University
Introduction
Starting with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, Habsburg multinational rhetoric tended
to reconcile any apparent contradiction between national equality, obtained as a
consequence of the 1848 Revolution, and the political necessity of retaining distinctions
between Hungarian and Transylvanian Romanian nationalisms.* The success of this rhetoric
reflected the Habsburg ability to connect social practices to the beliefs of a politically
frustrated nationalist élite inside the new political organisational structure reflected
by the union of Transylvania with Hungary in 1868. The relationship of the Transylvanian
Romanian nationalist leaders with Vienna shaped their new nationalist rhetoric, thereby
ensuring the increasing popularity of such rhetoric throughout much of the socially and
regionally diverse Habsburg Empire. As the only source of authority and guarantees, at
least until 1867, Vienna was naturally the object of national strategies, that effectively
reflected the combination of Habsburg ideology embodied by Habsburgtreue with the
emerging nationalist discourse. At the end of the nineteenth century, this relationship
provided both rhetorical and real space for the mediation of the Monarchy's two powerful
yet contradictory urges: between egalitarian demands of all nationalities and the
Hungarian as well as Austrian desire to prevent a potential change of their political
hegemony.
This study pictures the political activity of one of the most prominent Hungarian
born-Romanian nationalista at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
century, Aurel C. Popovici (1863-1917). It also emphasises the emergence of his
nationalist discourse in the late Habsburg Empire and its interaction with the Hungarian
complement. At the end of the nineteenth century, Transylvanian Romanian nationalists
forged a radical discourse that challenged the legitimacy of the reigning system of the
Austro-Hungarian Compromise.
The ensuing struggles between Hungarian and Transylvanian Romanian nationalisms were
highly politicised by the emergence of new political discourses. On the one hand, the
Hungarian nationalists instrumentalised their "battle" with Transylvanian
Romanians using two strategies. The first produced an "interregional political
culture" specific to the Hungarian part of the Empire that meant to serve as an
alternative ideology to the unsatisfactory Unio Trio Natiorum structure of the
Ancient Regime. Organised through the cultural heritage of the 1848 Revolution and
intrinsically motivated by the revolt against the Habsburgs, this new nationalist culture
became a means for building, co-ordinating and controlling participation in politics by
the Volk. The other strategy involved the elaboration of a powerful public
rhetoric developed by Hungarian and Austrian liberals to justify the political Compromise
of 1867.
On the other hand, an archaeology of Transylvanian Romanian nationalism in the late
Habsburg Empire indicates that many intellectuals with strong identity resentments engaged
in instituted but unauthorised transgressions of established political order. Nationalism
provided many Transylvanian Romanian intellectuals with a powerful and positive source of
identity. Between them and Hungarian nationalists the icons of nationalism and competition
for power co-existed and competed with other symbols rooted in the social interaction of
Transylvanian ethnic communities that preceded the intrusion of modern ideologies. In this
context, intellectuals created a rhetorical framework that has influenced the course of
nationalism, but can we depend on their performances in order to provide conclusive
remarks of the phenomenology of Transylvanian Romanian nationalism?
Many scholars have framed the national movement of Transylvanian Romanians in the
Habsburg Empire as a result of Imperial political propaganda that stimulated the efforts
of Romanian nationalists to build a separate national identity from Hungarian nationalism.
This picture was particularly reinforced beginning with 1890, when the importance of a
distinct cultural and political identity began to radicalise Transylvanian Romanian
nationalists causing their nationalism to become fundamentally opposed to Hungarian
nationalist principles and discourses. This period initiated a fervent debate about
a new type of national identity for both Transylvanian Romanians and Hungarians.
Paradoxically, historians have generally ignored the vitality of the interaction between
Hungarian and Transylvanian Romanian nationalism to focus more narrowly on the
irreconciability of the two movements. This study suggests that the conflictual political
discourse developed by Hungarians and Transylvanian Romanians can be attributed to the
simultaneous political mobilisation determined by Hungarian nationalism and to the
emergence of a new Transylvanian Romanian nationalist élite, whose fervent nationalism
strongly imposed itself on the politics of the Empire. The anatomy of this
"intertwined" nationalism requires a particular exercise: sufficient emersion to
grasp its predominant modes of expression and to avoid a seductive reproduction of the
conventional dichotomic history of Hungarians and Romanians in the Habsburg Empire.
Aurel C. Popovici introduced a new national ideology, in which
traditional terms such as "religion," "language" and
"politic" were transformed. His nationalist striving becomes more intelligible
when one surveys the recurrent constants in the construction of the Romanian nation in
Transylvania. These are: 1) the lack of an efficient dialogue with the Hungarian state; 2)
the religious component; 3) the permanent construction of the national language; 4)
political and social dissatisfaction and economical pressures; and 5) the
construction of a national discourse upon the Habsburg rhetoric of integration.
This study particularly insists on the last aspect, trying to understand the modalities
through which Aurel C. Popovici inaugurated a new discourse about the nation in Habsburg
Transylvania. Within this framework, the focus is on nationalist discourse and political
culture of the Austro-Hungarian scene and aims to address a larger question about the
extent of collective social and national identities expressed by the Hungarian and
Transylvanian Romanian nationalists at the end of the nineteenth century Habsburg
Monarchy. Analysing the the nationalist discourse of Aurel C. Popovici, I attempt
to illuminate its intrinsic relationship with Hungarian nationalism and Habsburg political
rhetoric. Within this framework, I primarily discuss the construction of a
divergent nationalism in the Habsburg Empire. To construct my analysis, I have organised
my argument into four parts. The first concentrates on the theoretical issue of
nationalism and reflects upon the historical and political context of the analysis. The
second part discusses Aurel C. Popovici's political activity and reveals its intimate
connection with Hungarian nationalism and Habsburg national politics. A general survey on
the Transylvanian Romanian history probes the role of the Imperial Court in the
construction of their national identity. Transylvanian Romanians, frustrated by Hungarian
nationalists in their attempts to envision a national identity for all the inhabitants of
the Hungarian Kingdom, tended to avoid this by constructing their national demands and
nationalism through the political rhetoric of the Imperial Court.
The history of Hungarian and Transylvanian Romanian theory of national
identity/nationalism can be convingcinly converted to the study of those intellectuals who
related to the formation of cultural and social identities to Vienna and Budapest. This
identification of the intellectual as the symbolic producer of the social and cultural
national signifiers is precisely supported by the topic of ethnic/national identity
itself. The case of Aurel C. Popovici urges the observer to put those events that are
suggestive for understanding the phenomenon of nationalist interaction into their
appropriate context in order to reconstruct the mechanism that lies behind them. In an
attempt to assess the problem of nationalism in the Habsburg Empire, this article situates
Aurel C. Popovici in his respective milieu. Accordingly, I have provided an exposition of
his principal ideas together with some reflections of his argumentation.
The third part traces nationalism and the national ideology of the Transylvanian
Romanians, and analyses the growth in discourse about Romanianness, concentrating
on how Aurel C. Popovici exercised this concept. He emphasised the ethnic component
of nationalism and intrinsically related it to Hungarian nationalism and the
political rhetoric of the heir to the throne, Francis Ferdinand. Wherever possible, I have
extracted details that position Aurel C. Popovici's case in the complicated political
picture of the nineteenth century Habsburg Ethnoradikalismus. This can be
defined as a reaction stemming from Aurel C. Popovici’s Risorgimento
nationalism to Hungarian integral nationalism.
Finally, the concluding part synthesises these issues and stresses the need to use a
variety of theoretical perspectives in order to reflect the historical challenges
suggested by fin-de-sičcle Austro-Hungarian nationalism.
1. The Context of Analysis
Transylvania represents a referential area in any analysis of Romanian or Hungarian
nationalism. Its multiculturalism and ethnic variety suggest that this is an ideal region
for the emergence of complementary nationalist discourses. It is a "border
area," or in other words "a liminal area where creative energies are released,
creating signs and identities that are borne outside the national projects of the two
nations which are presumed to control identities in this zone." This premise invites
to a solicitous reading of the Hungarian and Transylvanian Romanian nationalism alike. The
period between 1890-1910 has been characterised by an unequalled fecundity where known
ideas about nation and new political attitudes and theories interacted.
The theory of a distinct Romanian nation was produced, for the first time, in
eighteenth century Transylvania. As a result of Maria Theresa and Joseph II's reforms that
inadequately integrated the multinational groups into the Habsburg policy, Transylvanian
Romanians developed a profound sentiment of identity frustration within the system. One of
the main consequences of this policy was the construction of the Romanian nation and its
corroborative phenomenon, Romanian nationalism. An important feature that has
distinguished Transylvania from other regions, was that the emergence of Romanianness
and its national program in Transylvania has been directly contaminated with concurrent
national identities and nationalisms. If one approaches nationalism from the perspective
of the regional political culture it had created, the narrative of the interaction of
Hungarian with Transylvanian Romanian nationalism looks different. Nationalist culture in
Transylvania seems to have reinvented itself frequently, adapting to contemporary
political rhetoric as it tried to maintain its discursive hegemony within local Hungarian
and Romanian society.
Transylvanian Romanian ethic identity appeared under the Austrian Enlightened
integrative system and was transformed during the 1848 Revolution into a modern conception
of nation. One can argue that what followed after 1848 was only a simulacrum of the
Habsburg ordo mundis, embodied by Francis Joseph’s Gesamtmonarchie. For
the first time, the 1848 Revolution placed in radical opposition Transylvanian Romanians
and Hungarians and strongly undermined the traditional basis of Habsburg political power.
As a consequence, they succeeded, for a short period, to arrange separate administrations
of their own and the creation of their national identity emerged together with a political
referent that contested the existing order. Transylvanian Romanians' goal was political
autonomy, through which they attempted to separate themselves from the Hungarian Kingdom.
Beginning with this moment and, later by questioning the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, they
argued that national identity had to function as a complement to political autonomy. This
national model was cogent until the end of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and one of the
leading advocate of this position was Aurel C. Popovici.
2. Interpreting Aurel C. Popovici
Aurel C. Popovici was born in 1863 in Lugoj, in the Banat region. He was the son of a
craftsman, Constantin Popovici and of Maria Udrea. His uncle, "Tata Moş u
Udrea" (Old Man Udrea), was one of the few Transylvanian Romanian deputies in the
Hungarian Parliament in 1869. As a representative of the Romanian nation he was repeatedly
appointed to the Habsburg Imperial Court. His nephew exemplary illustrated the tradition
of a double-bounded Romanian intellectual. Destined for an academic career, young
Aurel enjoyed a good education and distinguished himself as a polyglot character who spoke
several European languages (German, English, French, Italian and Hungarian) and was
socialised both in the historical and political reality of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
and of Western culture.
After completing his primary and secondary education in one of the Romanian
confessional school (1869-1873), he studied at the Hungarian Gymnasium of his native town
(1873-1880) and, then, continued at the Romanian Lyceum of Beius (1880-1884). In his
native region, he had the opportunity to directly observe the power of nationalism and the
variety of its expression. In the 1870s, the 1848 Generation could still effectively mark
the evolution of the nationalist movement, but its paramount role in constructing Romanian
nationalism began to be challenged by a dynamic strata of intellectuals who were willing
to establish new doctrinal parameters. For the post-Compromise generation of nationalist
intellectuals this political act reverberated particulary painfully. They experienced two
main political options. The so-called passivists believed that Transylvanian Romanians
should not participate in the political life of the state, thereby not recognising the
system imposed in 1867. They rejected any participation in parliamentary life and
election. The other group was the activists, who considered that no efficient opposition
could develop outside the political system. Thus, they preferred participation in
elections and the entry of representatives in Budapest's parliament. Passivism
manifested in Transylvania proper and Activism in the Banat, Crisana and Maramures.
Although, quite distinctive, both currents, passivist and activist, emerged
simultaneously, even after the creation of an unitary National Romanian Party in 1881. It
is important to note that Aurel C. Popovici belonged by his origin and option to the
activist tradition and this characteristic would fundamentaly shape his activity.
In 1885, Aurel C. Popovici registered at the University of Vienna in order to study
medicine and philosophy and three years later he transferred to the University of Graz. He
preferred, however, political activity to the study of medicine and, while studying at
Graz, he entranced on the nationalist arena of the Habsburg Empire. In the early 1890s he
started to participate in the Transylvanian Romanian national movement and in the
nationalist debates of the period. In 1891, he became one of the leaders of the Romanian
National Party and editor of the most incisive Romanian journal, Tribuna (The
Tribune), but his sensational success appeared with the publication of Replica (The
Rejoinder) in 1892.
Starting with this book, his nationalist interest embraced the issues of national
autonomy and federalism, topics that would be developed in his following writings. In
1893, accused for lčse-magyarisme and persecuted by the Hungarian government as a
result of publishing Replica, Aurel C. Popovici emigrated to Austria and Italy and
ended his fugitive voyage in Romania. In Bucharest he began a new career as a teacher of
German language. In 1893, he founded the journal Româ nia Jună (Juvenile
Romania). Constantly, he continue to write in favour of a federalised
Habsburg Monarchy. Thus in 1905 he attempted to found the journal Groß -Ö sterreich and,
in 1906, published his most famous book, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Groß-Österreich.
Nevertheless, nationalism and national ideology continued to play a significant role in
his activity. Between 1908 and 1909 he was the editor in chief and director of one of the
most important Romanian journal, Semă nă torul (The Disseminator), where
historian Nicolae Iorga and social theorist Constantin Stere published regularly. In 1910,
he published one of the most controversial books on the subject, Nationalism or
Democracy. In 1912, he settled in Vienna and in 1916, after Romania's entrance in the
First World War, he moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he died in 1917, at the age of 54.
His last contribution to the history of Transylvanian Romanian nationalism, Le question
Roumaine en Transylvanie et en Hongrie, appeared posthumously.
The presentation of his nationalist ideology may offer an interpretation of a neglected
but important trend in the evolution of Transylvanian Romanian nationalism in the Habsburg
Monarchy. As we have shown, Aurel C. Popovici began as a dynamic participant in the
nationalist debates in the Habsburg Monarchy and simultaneously expressed his
philosophical ideas about the reformation of the Empire in the European media. In his
intellectual writings, one can detect figures such as Edmund Burke, Eduard von
Hartmann, Ludwig Gumplowicz, Rudolf von Jhering and Houston Chamberlain. Equally important
is that after 1894 he was an active member of Viennese society, around the mayor of
Vienna, Karl Lueger, and the heir to the throne, Francis Ferdinand. He shared and
cultivated fin-de-sičcle Viennese cultural and ideological patterns. Thus, it is not
surprising, that his books, published in Romania, Austria and Switzerland, attempted to
define a Sitz im Leben for Transylvanian Romanians and a new symbolic topology,
having Vienna as the only political centre. In addition, it is important to stress that he
offered a new collective identity that stressed Romanianness as
aggressive, homogeneous and isolationist in its relations with the Hungarian state. In
many significant ways, Aurel C. Popovici embodied a combination of nationalism and
conservatism, consistently attempting to maintain the precarious balance between the
historical legacy of the Habsburg House and the preservation of national and conservative
vested interests.
Aurel C. Popovici was distinguished among leading Transylvanian Romanian nationalists
mainly because he passionately insisted, from an eschatological perspective, that national
survival should be the primary issue on the political agenda of any nationalist program.
The particular emphasis on national survival suggestively reflected his image concerning
Hungarian nationalism. Aurel C. Popovici was a radical nationalist who did not take into
consideration a possible policy of concessions by the Hungarians to the ethnic minorities.
He struggled to revolutionise the Austro-Hungarian national arena and the role of
Transylvanian Romanians. As a radical and reactionary nationalist, he was not animated by
the idea of a political framework that would harmonise the monarchy's culturally diverse
population. Representatively, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise was rejected as a viable
political system, because of this implicit aim. A harmonised Austrian-Hungarian state
would have counter-argued Aurel C. Popovici's idea of an expanded Romanian political
community within the Habsburg Empire and its theory about ethnic struggles.
His fanatical commitment to Romanian racial character has aspired to prepare the
Romanian nation to new political circumstances. He strongly believed that a federalised
Habsburg Empire has to replace the Dualist system and be the protector against Russian and
German expansion. Accordingly, his "ennoblement" Romanianness created a
radical concept of nation that embraced all Romanians that had the same "national
consciousness." In many respects, Aurel C. Popovici's national theory resembles
Fichte's nationalism and its message: belonging to a given nation can be and has to be
translated politically. As many German nationalists, Aurel C. Popovici thought that
nationalism will result in a political solution if one apprehends correctly the national
character of the awakening national groups. In his political philosophy, Romanianness was
linked to ethnicity rather than other components of nationalism, and the solution of the
nationality question in the Habsburg Empire was federalism.
Although, Aurel C. Popovici shared many characteristics with other activists, it is
difficult to place him in the tradition of Transylvanian Romanian nationalists. One has to
look carefully at his political opinions and ideas in order to understand that for
him political action was not an ambiguous action, as was the case of most Transylvanian
Romanian leaders, but it did have profound existential implications. His ideas surpassed
the stereotypical rhetoric of national movement leaders and the clichéd discourse
on the Romanian nation in Transylvania. At the end of the nineteenth century,
Transylvanian Romanian nationalists incurred some difficulties in mobilising new social
forces for their ambitions and aspirations, Aurel C. Popovici distinguished himself in
striving to transform the Romanian nationalist movement. It is suggestive to note that he
ingeniously manipulated the definition of the authentic Romanianness, as the
persuasive way to control the heterogeneous picture of Transylvania. This is visible in
the dynamic of his nationalism. As suggested by Peter Alter in his Nationalism, two
main types of nationalism, Risorgimento and integral nationalism, can be distinguished.
One can detect a symmetric connection of Aurel C. Popovici's nationalism with both
Risorgimento and integral nationalism. Both types are results of particular crises that a
given society experiences. I would suggest that in Aurel C. Popovici's case the crisis of
political non-representation of Romanians in the Hungarian part of the Empire was the
major source of his virulent nationalist critique. Nevertheless, both types of nationalism
may suggest an interesting perspective in the interpretation of the national identity of
Transylvanian Romanians and its relationship with Hungarian nationalism. In addition,
one can consider that such a typology may even reshape the understanding of Aurel C.
Popovici’s nationalism and the mechanism of reproduction of ethnic conflicts in
Transylvania in the last decades of Habsburg Transylvania.
Aurel C. Popovici's Risorgimento nationalism has been decisively influenced by
nineteenth century Italian and German nationalism. Following Giuseppe Mazzini and Johann
Gottfried Herder, he advocated the same principle of liberation from political and social
oppression and was convinced that Transylvanian Romanians, a nation so evidently different
in language and character than Hungarians, have a unique mission to perform for humanity.
As Alter suggests, Risorgimento nationalism "comprises elements of a liberal ideology
of opposition. It is a protest movement against an existing system of political
domination, against a state which destroys the nation's traditions and prevents it
flourishing." Aurel C. Popovici offers an instructive example of this ideology of
opposition. Although, very emancipatory in its expressions, his nationalism was at the
same time integral and xenophobic. This imprint suggests that Aurel C. Popovici's
translation of German and Italian nationalism had notably to do with German and Italian
political philosophy, but also that was decisively marked by local varieties of political
theory. Inasmuch, his nationalism opposed the "Magyarisation" project of
Hungarian nationalism.
The testimonies of his contemporaries suggested that Aurel C. Popovici was a
controversial character. Although a radical nationalist and a conservative thinker, he did
not reject the progress of the modern society. One could deplore the "excesses"
of the Hungarian governments to building their "unitary Magyar state," as Aurel
C. Popovici certainly did, yet continue to believe both in history's fundamentally
progressive design and in the Hungarian state being part of this process. This was,
however, the dominant contemporary Transylvanian Romanian political attitude. Otherwise,
it would be difficult to explain why those who "reacted" to the Compromise in a
negative manner were violently perceived and denounced as "reactionaries," who
demanded national autonomy.
According to Aurel C. Popovici, national aspirations can be gained only through
continuous and progressive struggle. In his post-Darwinist theory of national identity and
on the necessity and the justification of national struggle, Aurel C. Popovici was
inspired by one of the most famous professors of law at the University of Vienna, the
neo-rationalist Rudolf von Jhering. In essence, he elaborated a positivist, juridical
theory that emphasised the ultimate element of natural law. For him, "the power of
the nation equalises the power of its sentiment of law" and when this sentiment is
abused a real "violence" animates that nation. This symbolic violence that
characterised the relations between Romanian and Hungarian nationalism in Transylvania was
in Aurel C. Popovici's interpretation extremely deterministic. It "has its origin in
the ethic power of the idea of law. It is the protest of the powerful moral nature against
the violation of law. It is the most beautiful and elevating proof of the sentiment of
law."
Aurel C. Popovici expanded Rudolf von Jhering's view that law results from conflicts
among competing social groups. To him, because of the fact that the Hungarian political
élite ignored the Transylvanian Romanian claim of separate national identity, they were
more likely to envision a "violent" form of nationalism. The conflict was, in
Hungary, between national groups and were less characterised by social functions. From
this perspective, the modern conflict between the two concurrent nations, Transylvanian
Romanian and Hungarian, was an inevitable symptom of the antagonism that characterised
Transylvania after the Ausgleich (1867). From the very beginning of his public
career, Aurel C. Popovici declared himself a fundamental opponent of Dualism. Within a
short period of time, while still a student, he responded to the traumatic political
development of the Transylvanian Romanian and Hungarian interaction, as expressed by the
process of Memorandum and Replica, by offering new visions of the Romanian
community. The most successful of these aimed to address two different concerns
simultaneously: the challenge of mass movements and politics as well as the increasing
importance of nationalism. He categorically aspired to fuse them into an ethnic national
identity. The phases of this process are discussed in the following section.
3. National Symbolic Conflict and Romanianness
Considering that Vienna refused (as expressed in the political formula of 1867) to
respect Transylvanian Romanians aspirations for national autonomy, this constraint led to
a redefinition of their political goals in favour of national emancipation. Liberal
rhetoric of István Széchenyi and Ferenc Deák provided a crucial ideological foundation
for the explosion of Hungarian nationalist politics after the Compromise. This was
intrinsically related to the proposal of Hungarian liberalism: become a Hungarian, i. e.
to speak Hungarian language, and thus you will be welcomed to the leading national
community.
The case of Aurel C. Popovici suggests a different rhetoric. By and large, he argued
for an inherent element that shapes one ethnic identity. If there was a recurrent theme
that determined Transylvanian Romanian nationalism and tended to become hegemonic within
Transylvania, it was rather mono-ethnism than any other form of ethnic complementary. This
particular property was virtually accepted by Hungarians and Transylvanian Romanians
alike, as the accompanying idea of building their idea of nation. In Transylvanian
Romanian political tradition, Aurel C. Popovici was not the first to theorise and
construct on this element, and one can cite the case of his predecessor, Alexandru Mocioni
(Mocsonyi), but he was the first to insist on the ethnic and racial element
and impregnate it with an expressive and coherent form.
Nation functions as a hegemonic narrative that tends to completely describe the
integrative/normative cultural and political pattern of the national community. Beginning
with the eighteenth century, the Transylvanian Romanian idea of nation suffered a long
history of successive reformations, finally radicalised in the last
decades of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At that time, one can detect a fluidity of
political discourses and an emergent ethnic nationalism that are difficult to define.
One can consider national identity and nation as ideal-types that perform as cultural
artefacts. Particular constructs of an unique European political geography, generated by
the Aufklärung, are composed of a defined number of interrelated components:
ethnic, cultural, territorial, economic and political. These articulate the
solidarity of its members that are united by the same cultural memory, myths and
traditions. This multidimensionality particularly characterised Transylvania in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the case of the formation of the Romanian nation in
Transylvania, there was an indefinite mixture between its horizontal (only a thin
social strata of high clergy participated in the construction of the Romanian ethnic
theory) and vertical evolution (the image of a compact and profound archaic
rural community, animated by a popular culture and concentrated on the same traditions and
historical heritage).
As an ethno-political movement, Aurel C. Popovici's nationalism worked broadly to shape
both relations with the Austro-Hungarian state and within Hungarian society and it
attempted to satisfy the needs of its parallel appeals: to empower the nationalist élite
as extensively as possible and to confer upon them the political power that their national
status demanded. By the late nineteenth century, Hungarian and Transylvanian Romanian
nationalists often augmented chauvinism as an axiom that promoted the uniqueness of each
nation. This was related with the protection of "Magyar Unitary State" within a
multiethnic society whose national parameters were increasingly more broadly defined in
terms of national language and national consciousness. Within this milieu, Aurel C.
Popovici battled to legitimate and institutionalise its informal influence in the Austrian
and Hungarian society. It has to be understood that like all ideal-type models, Aurel C.
Popovici's nationalism describes no antagonism perfectly. Its first and violent critique
was against the dualist system by emphasising its accidental nature. It also rejected
homogeneity and social uniformity imposed by the Hungarian government, as a means of
solidarity within a given community, aiming to re-create the idea of nation as a basis for
the regeneration of the present.
It can be argued that Eastern European nationalists are inspired by and fundamentally
devoted to the progress of their nation. They promote this through three approaches.
First, by proving the dynamic aspects of the past, they modernise the national symbols in
favour of their nationalist goal. Second, by emphasising the intellectual arguments of
Western culture, they advocate a radical critique of a single model of nation. Finally, by
reconciliation of potentially antagonistic national groups, they request a stable and
common national program. Aurel C. Popovici combined all these tendencies in his theory
about the Romanian national identity. Although, its significance can be properly judged in
relation to the general evolution of Romanian national movement in Hungary in the last
decades of the Habsburg Empire, it has to be contextualised within a series of events to
which Aurel C. Popovici contributed, such as the establishment of the Cultural League
of All Romanians (1890), the elaboration of Replica (1891-1992), the Memorandum
(1892) and the Congress of Nationalities (1895).
He surpassed the primordialist phase of the nation that had characterised his
nationalist predecessors and proposed a different concept of nation, from the one that
national leaders had manipulated during the 1848 Revolution. Characteristically, Aurel C.
Popovici's theory provided a sort of marginal but dynamic glossary for some of the terms
that had been developed within national identity politics and suggests different aspects
of the reproduction/production of national ideology in the Habsburg Empire. Since the
emergence of national discourses, the core of intellectual activity of Transylvanian
Romanians have centred on the idea of nation. From the beginning of the national movement
in the eighteenth century, Transylvanian Romanian nationalists have based their national
demands on Imperial diplomas (e. g. 1691, 1701) and "historical arguments," such
as the doctrine of the Dacian-Roman continuity.
The supporters of activism abandoned the restoration of Transylvania's autonomy, which
had been the central goal of Passivism. At the end of the nineteenth century, many
Transylvanian Romanian leaders still considered that an autonomous Transylvania could
provide the indispensable constitutional framework for national autonomy. As Keith
Hitchins suggests, "Transylvania's autonomy was thus a central issues at all Romanian
political conferences between 1869 and 1890. Their linking of autonomy and national rights
was an essential historicist view of the question, which reinforced traditional Romanian
attitudes toward the Magyars." But, for Aurel C. Popovici, the autonomy of
Transylvania, as a distinct political entity, meant the return to the "Golden
Age" of the medieval Principality of Transylvania, that could no longer function as a
symbolic source for the satisfaction of Transylvanian Romanian national aspiration, simply
because they were not part of Natio. In this context, he proposed a new element in
defining the national identity of Transylvanian Romanians, the national consciousness.
One clear example of this discursive revitalisation of nationalism and its simultaneous
appropriation and manipulation by extrinsic political factors can be already observed in Replica.
For the first time in the nationalist literature of Transylvanian Romanians, there was no
mention of the historical autonomy of Transylvania. Aurel C. Popovici did not operate with
"historical" or "constitutional" arguments in order to advocate
national claims. As he considers, "In most of the cases the historical right is the
negation of the principle of nationality." He simply posed the issue of accommodating
cultural and ethnic nationalism among Transylvanian Romanians, because he considered the
conflictual situation of Transylvania as possessing a national importance for defining the
normative definition of Romanianness. In The Nationalities Question, he
insists on this aspect: "The essence of the principle of nationality is nothing else
but the claim of people to be completely autonomous in all their business." To
accomplish this, he had to accommodate the ethnonational heterogeneity of the Habsburg
Empire by interrelating his two loyalties, the loyalty to the nation and loyalty to the
Austrian idea. This dilemma would be eloquently exploited in his book, Die Vereinigten
Staaten von Groß -Ö sterreich.
In the writing of the 1848 generation, the idea of nation and the political
autonomy of the Principality of Transylvania coexisted. Then, Transylvania was vindicated
by the Transylvanian Romanians as being sacred in their symbolic struggle
for legitimisation with Hungarian nationalists. After the 1848 Revolution, Transylvanian
Romanian nationalists followed the same "historical-constitutional" pattern in
their dialogue with Hungarian nationalists and the Imperial court, until 1890 when Aurel
C. Popovici's idea about the nature and destiny of the ethnic nation reconfigured
Transylvanian Romanian nationalism.
Aurel C. Popovici’s conception of nation emphasised the right of a given community
to participate in political life according to its own unique character. This theory,
surpassed the narrow limits imposed by the historical autonomy of Transylvania and the
principle of national equality, in order to frame an evolutionary logic based on
the consciousness of national identity. Surveying the nationalist literature at the
end of the nineteenth century, he complained that Romanians (both from Transylvania and
the Romanian Kingdom) were not essentially preoccupied with the principle of nationality.
He critiquely begins The Principle of Nationality (1894) with:
It is characteristic that in our literature there is hardly a work about the principle
of nationality, even if we are under social conditions that require the nature and the
power of this principle to be known in every social strata of Romanian society. In the
last instance, this principle is the stimulus of all national demands.
(Popovici’s emphasis)
For him the principle of nationality was a "modern political idea," a
"phase in the natural evolution of the practical application of liberal and
egalitarian principles" and, consequently, nationalism was the most important force
of the time. The nationality principle received its impulses from the Enlightenment.
Through the spread of modern ideas based on the French Revolution and
because of the Germanisation policy of Joseph II in Austria, nationalism stimulated
a collective identity among the Habsburg Empire's nationalities. In contrast with the
previous generations that emphasised the importance of "instrumental" factors in
the determination of a nation, Aurel C. Popovici raised the important question:
"Well, what is the distinctive feature of a given nationality? The common origin or
the language? The religion or the common customs? The political community or the
territory?"
Herder's theory, as expressed in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschischte der
Menschheit (1784-1791), explains the particularity of each nation in terms of
language, religion or political institution. But for Aurel C. Popovici these elements do
not accurately represent the essence of the nation. For example, language was for Herder
the most exceptional expression of the spirit of a nation and it should be preserved as
such. For Aurel C. Popovici,
In the nationalities disputes the question of language is always put in discussion. But
this question is not the essence of the principle of nationality. It is one of the
elements, so to speak, that constitute the principle of nationality. National autonomy is
the essence of this principle. Thus, the question of language is solved when a people gain
the autonomy of its public affairs.
The only significant ingredient in constructing national identity and obtaining
national autonomy was, for him, "national consciousness." This deformation of
the constituent attributes of national identity by emphasising "national
consciousness" shows how effectively organicism might serve as the analytical
criterion for constructing a coherent nationalism. A generation before, Alexandru Mocioni
(Mocsonyi) stressed the importance of national consciousness in the national evolution of
an ethnic community. But for Aurel C. Popovici, this aspect was fundamental to his theory
of nation. In this respect, he was strongly influenced by the emergence of theories about
national specificity and the importance of national consciousness in defining nationality,
that abounded in the late nineteenth century, especially in Italian nationalism,
especially by Vico, Mamiani, Marco Minghetti and Mancini. This redefinition of the nation
expressed a new Weltanschauung that characterised the new generation of
Transylvanian Romanian nationalist and the symbolic national conflict in Hungary. As
Alexandru Mocioni already observed,
It is natural if even our people, for their sad past and an unfavourable present, try
to find out a solution for a better and beautiful future. This future seems to be provided
by the destiny to our young national generation, this our new generation, whether it would
realise that has to rise to this noble goal. This destiny cannot be something else, but
national culture and the complete development of national consciousness.
National consciousness is fundamental for attaining national claims. It is a sense of
solidarity that characterises an ethnic group and without this, national rights can not
subsist. Its mythic and symbolic construction is performing to assert legitimacy and
strengthen authority. Aurel C. Popovici's nationalism assigned all national aspirations an
auxiliary function in the consolidation of national consciousness. It was part of the
"Magyarisation" political process that was perceived as a violent symbolic
project of social engineering. National consciousness was an organic progress that
articulated the particularity of a given nation.
According to this organic conception, humanity and similar nature, is infused with a
creative force that compels it to act as an individual. Thus, each national organism can
be seen as a creation of Nature's plan. From this perspective, Aurel C. Popovici was the
first Romanian to use the evolutionist theories of the Social-Darwinists in the
construction of a nationalist theory. However, he was a critical disciple, and did not
follow Ludwig Gumplowicz, who influenced by Darwinism argued that the small nations of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire should submit to Dualism. On the contrary, Aurel C. Popovici
believed that Darwin’s theory, especially in the juridical version of Rudolf von
Jhering justified the national struggle of the Transylvanian Romanians against the
Compromise system. This usage of Darwin's theory of natural selection and the doctrine of
the survival of the strongest is yet another facet of interference to integral
nationalism.
As a professor of law at the University of Graz, Gumplowicz was among the pioneers of
systematic sociology in Austria. He shared the sociology of Emile Durkheim, by considering
that what acts in the human being is not individuality but the expression of collectivity.
Assuming this Aurel C. Popovici argues that, "From the vantage point of a serious
analysis, there is no <man> within the <mankind.> There is only man in his
family, in his nationality." Considering that man does not exist in isolation,
"national consciousness," believes Aurel C. Popovici, "is the equivalent of
the force" that shapes people's manifestations. Consequently, Transylvanian Romanians
had at the end of nineteenth century the force to present their fortified
nationalism. What was important for Transylvanian Romanians was how to accommodate Aurel
C. Popovici’s principle of "national consciousness." First of all, one has
to question what were the modalities of expression of national consciousness. Aurel C.
Popovici suggests that,
the concrete modalities for the development of the national consciousness are the same
like those used in the free and constitutional states for awakening and affirming civic
spirit and public opinion. Besides school and the development of a national literature,
history and economical resources, there are press, associations and public reunions that
have a powerful impact on this direction.
He realised that there is a difference between the national consciousness of
Transylvanian Romanians and the other nationalities of the Empire. He experienced the
non-existence of a Verfassungspatriotismus of Transylvanian Romanian and Hungarian
élite, galvanised rather by a stale Siebenbürgenpatriotismus. Aurel C. Popovici
had to admit that the "homeland of a real nationalist is his nationality and its
territory, without considering the political borders." The achievement of a national
identity can give to a nation the right "to constitute, according to its own will, an
independent state or to unite with another state following their national community. This
is the moment of the making of nation-states, according to the principle of
nationality." Although this may suggest an irredentist idea, Aurel C. Popovici's
intention was not to dissolve the Hungarian state as such, because for him the principle
of nationality was not necessarily a centrifugal force.
Another important problem related with his idea of nation was the problem of
assimilation. Transylvanian Romanian national identity preceded the Hungarian intention of
assimilation. But, how does this narrate Aurel C. Popovici's nationalism? In his radical
interpretation, Transylvanian Romanians must consciousness their national identity,
otherwise they would be assimilated by the Hungarians. For Aurel C. Popovici the essential
feature of the nation was an assiduous struggle for its own individuality and its symbolic
ethnicity. What matters was the internal violence of nationalism associated with the
external experience of preserving the Austrian Monarchy. This internal violence was a
consequence of the fact that Transylvanian Romanians did not possess access to the
"elements of power," or, in other words, a high level of nationalist and
political culture. Nationalist leaders, argues Aurel C. Popovici, are designated to guide
the national project. They are:
The men who lead the struggle for the national rights of a people ... [who] can find
the energy and the ideal devotion to win the battle. Whole nations are today enrolled
under the flag of the principle of nationality, a whole world of young nations recall
their place under the sun. The triumph of this principle is beyond doubt, because its
foundation is in the culture, and its allies are the strong forces of nature.
After this survey on the phenomenology of Aurel C. Popovici’s nationalism,
one may argue that he can be conceived in a specific framework that had extreme importance
in the process of Transylvanian Romanians nation-building. This framework embraced both
Aurel C. Popovici’s theory of national consciousness and his particular chauvinism.
Nationalism or Democracy (1910) is a collection of articles written by Aurel C.
Popovici explaining the doctrine of its author. "I," envisions himself Aurel C.
Popovici, "represent completely ‘reactionary’ ideas, because
‘reaction’ represents the eternal condition of a national culture: the historic
wisdom of the peoples against the desires of the sporadic individuals." These
"individuals" were for him the generation of the 1848 Revolution. In
Popovici’s opinion, they "indoctrinated a whole generation of Romanians from the
Old Kingdom, with their dangerous and democratic ideas." The only ones who deserve
consideration are those who have reactionary political conceptions. Among
them are Joseph de Maistre, Bismark, Cavour, Edmund Burke, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
Wilhelm II and the Romanian nationalist poet, Mihai Eminescu. As in the case of national
consciousness, Aurel C. Popovici's reactionary ideology was preceded by Alexandru Mocioni
(Mocsonyi), who stated that:
national reaction against the Germanisation policy of Joseph II was the main factor
that helped in the formation of the national consciousness of the Magyars. Again, the
national reaction against the Magyarisation tendency is the one that shapes the national
feeling of the other nations. (Mocioni’s emphasis)
It seems obvious that by accepting the intrinsic reactionary nature of any nationalism,
Aurel C. Popovici provided a more complex explanation of Transylvania’s Ethnoradikalismus.
Altogether, Democracy or Nationalism insinuates a complex and radical dialect of
progress and reaction. This somewhat tortured argumentation might be well continued by
understanding the "morphology" of his nationalism. It was discussed
earlier in the paper in which manners Aurel C. Popovici instrumentalised these trends. One
essential aspect should be kept for this analysis. For him, the nation is the reaction.
As he affirms:
The principle of nationality was and is, in its full expression, a reactionary
principle. This is because it was and it is the most natural and legitimate revolt of the
violated nature of nations. It is a national reaction against the system of cosmopolitan
equalisation, against the brutal intentions of some states, that are leading by real
dreamers or even vandals in politics and culture, to intervene in the life of these
nations.
Another important aspect of the radical nationalism of Transylvanian Romanians and of
Aurel C. Popovici is the permanent contact with the nationalist versions produced by the
"centres," Budapest and Vienna. One can not understand Aurel C. Popovici’s
radical and reactionary nationalism without offering a comparative perspective on
this, given by its relation to Hungarian nationalism and Habsburg political rhetoric. His
nationalism was reactionary because he described it as a reaction to
Hungarian nationalism.
The Germanisation policy of Joseph II generated a vernacular and extreme Hungarian
national awakening. Based on that and different from the medieval Natio Hungarica,
a secularised intelligentsia emerged and animated a mass-nationalism. The peak of this
movement was reached with the revolution of 1848 and the violent anti-Habsburg reactions.
The defeat of the Hungarian revolution, the exile of Lájos Kossuth, its leader, and the Ausgleich
did not suppress but, on the contrary, revived the "integral" Hungarian
nationalism, epitomised by the regime of Kálmán Tisza (1875-1890) and, especially his
son, István Tisza (1903-1905 and 1913-1917). The motifs of this revival of Hungarian
nationalism after 1848, illustrate the competition for symbolic domination in Transylvania
in the last decades of the Habsburg Empire that culminated with the separation of
Transylvania from Hungary in 1918.
The revival of Hungarian integral nationalism was markdly influenced by figures such as
Bé la Grü nwald or Gusztá v Beksits, with whom Aurel C. Popovici had the most virulent
disputes. They advocated an aggresive ideology that asserted the hegemony and existence of
a single nation. Aurel C. Popovici elaborated a reactionary nationalism to respond to this
integral Hungarian nationalism, that would ruin the Monarchy. As known, the 1890's
witnessed several permutations of prominent importance in the national landscape of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Successive convulsions of liberalism and the emergence of new
forms of political expression, such as Christian-Socialism, Pan-Germanism, Zionism and
Nationalism, denoted that politics became substantially defined by mass-participation that
replaced the limited tradition of notable politics. The particular discourse of Aurel C.
Popovici symptomatically illustrates how gradually the liberal/national rhetoric of a
generation before is replaced. This new discourse legitimated itself as the motivating
force behind the national movement, undermining the traditional identification with the
state. These transformations had complex and often contradictory effects on Aurel C.
Popovici's nationalism. One of these was the vehement and virulent criticism of Hungarian
nationalism. However, the relationship between Aurel C. Popovici and the political
system in which he lived finally triumphed. At the end of the First World
War the Habsburg Monarchy would disappear from the map of Europe.
4. Conclusion
This study presented the political context within which Aurel C. Popovici’s
theories combated. As I suggested, the years between 1890 and 1910 were the locus of a
battle between two powerful discourses: the idea of the "Magyar Unitary State"
(a Magyar állam eszme) and the Transylvanian Romanian discourse on national identity.
Aurel C. Popovici's case may suggest many similarities with other intellectual cases from
the Habsburg Empire, either Transylvanian Romanian or Hungarian. One can even argue that
Aurel C. Popovici’s national ideology was among many of those political failures of
the Habsburg fin-de-sičcle. Based on a reactionary nationalist discourse he constructed a
radical model of national identity that had to comprehend the essence of nation. In an
attempt to explain the political and social circumstances under which he developed his
reaction against integral nationalism that characterised the last decades of the Habsburg
Empire, Aurel C. Popovici has offered the thesis that the crystallisation of such extreme
sentiments may engender the existence of the Monarchy. I his view this may be avoided by
abandoning the "Magyarisation" project and constructing a federative state based
on the ethnic map of the Empire. On the other hand, the historian that attempts to
understand the history of Transylvanian Romanians in the Habsburg Empire cannot ignore his
paricular form of nationalism. It was a substantial doctrine that framed the history of
nationalism of the Habsburg Empire and, as objectionable as the claim may appear, present
Romanian nationalism is, in many ways, Aurel C. Popovici's heir.
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